8.For more information¶
There are numerous sources of information on Linux kernel development andrelated topics. First among those will always be the Documentationdirectory found in the kernel source distribution. Start with thetop-levelprocess/howto.rst; also readprocess/submitting-patches.rst. Many internalkernel APIs are documented using the kerneldoc mechanism; “make htmldocs”or “make pdfdocs” can be used to generate those documents in HTML or PDFformat (though the version of TeX shipped by some distributions runs intointernal limits and fails to process the documents properly).
Various web sites discuss kernel development at all levels of detail. Yourauthor would like to humbly suggesthttps://lwn.net/ as a source;information on many specific kernel topics can be found via the LWN kernelindex at:
Beyond that, a valuable resource for kernel developers is:
And, of course, one should not forgethttps://kernel.org/, the definitivelocation for kernel release information.
There are a number of books on kernel development:
Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition (Jonathan Corbet, AlessandroRubini, and Greg Kroah-Hartman). Online athttps://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/.
Linux Kernel Development (Robert Love).
Understanding the Linux Kernel (Daniel Bovet and Marco Cesati).
All of these books suffer from a common fault, though: they tend to besomewhat obsolete by the time they hit the shelves, and they have been onthe shelves for a while now. Still, there is quite a bit of goodinformation to be found there.
Documentation for git can be found at:
9.Conclusion¶
Congratulations to anybody who has made it through this long-windeddocument. Hopefully it has provided a helpful understanding of how theLinux kernel is developed and how you can participate in that process.
In the end, it’s the participation that matters. Any open source softwareproject is no more than the sum of what its contributors put into it. TheLinux kernel has progressed as quickly and as well as it has because it hasbeen helped by an impressively large group of developers, all of whom areworking to make it better. The kernel is a premier example of what can bedone when thousands of people work together toward a common goal.
The kernel can always benefit from a larger developer base, though. Thereis always more work to do. But, just as importantly, most otherparticipants in the Linux ecosystem can benefit through contributing to thekernel. Getting code into the mainline is the key to higher code quality,lower maintenance and distribution costs, a higher level of influence overthe direction of kernel development, and more. It is a situation whereeverybody involved wins. Fire up your editor and come join us; you will bemore than welcome.